Video: Worst interview ever?

posted at 11:45 am on October 10, 2008 by Allahpundit

Well, no. This is the worst interview ever. This is merely the worst interview given by a major politician. The gentleman with the apparent head injury here is Stephane Dion, leader of Canada’s Liberal Party and would-be successor to Stephen Harper as PM, and he’s very upset indeed that his friends on the media would sandbag him with an election approaching by running the unedited footage. See Kate at Small Dead Animals for more on that. Exit quotation: “That outrage has less to do with what happened to Dion than it does the fact that Canadians just caught a glimpse of how this business operates, and they don’t like it.”

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Day 2: “we made a bedroom into the exercise room, and the future occupant of this house (the ‘minority party leader house’, so whoever loses the election lives there), if the future occupant is current PM stephen harper, then he can lose weight, because he is overweight, and has all those extra pounds no?”

This is a man, a politician, that during the highest gas prices Canadians have seen ever, decided to roll out a political platform that would increase the cost of gasoline. And he wonders why he’s looking up at Harper in the polls.

Can’t believe Canada’s liberal media is airing it. That would NEVER happen here with Obama.

They’re spinning it against Harper, which is why they’re giving it so much air time, to show how cruel ‘heartless Harper’ is. (The MSM has painted him as a cold fish for years; and as “being insensitive to the poor” over the financial crisis for the past 10 days.)

The MSM has also been mischaracterizing this as Harper calling Dion a retard who can’t understand English when Harper has only been criticizing Dion for not having an answer to the question of what he would have done differently and what he would do now.

One of the reasons this is newsworthy, is that if current Conservative Prime Minister Harper had the same sort of interview, the media would have aired it immediately. Airing it only after having doubts because they wanted to protect Dion shows how biased the media is towards liberal candidates.

Additionally, being a bilingual country, it’s pretty much a rule that you can only become Prime Minister if you fluently speak both languages. How many amazingly talented politicians has Canada missed out on as potential Prime Ministers because their French wasn’t up to par even if they come from all English parts of Canada? English speaking politicians have had their poor French critiqued enough in the past to make this an issue.

Would Canadians in this forum please stop saying that you will, or will not vote for the Prime Minister.

The perpetual ignorance of British subjects (which means you too Canada) is driving me crazy! If you are a subject in England or Canada, you do not, nor ever have lived in a democracy. You live in a parliamentary monarchy, where government executives and leaders are never, ever elected. They are always, and have been always appointed by the Queen.

This would be analagous to working at a privately owned company that is unionized. As an employee, you might get to vote for a union steward, but are never afforded voting rights on who leads the company itself and who wields executive power.

Canadians and Brits by their nature are bright people but this blatant false assumption about living in a democracy really exhibits wholesale ignorance.

Now before all of you patriots flame me, I defy you to produce an actual ballot that has a Prime minister, Head of State, Commander in Chief, Premier or any other executive position on it.

Would Canadians in this forum please stop saying that you will, or will not vote for the Prime Minister.

You’re correct that Canadians don’t directly vote for a PM but people use “I’m voting for X” or “I’m voting for X for PM” as lazy shorthand when “I’m voting for X‘s party” or “I’m voting for X to form the government” would be more correct.

You live in a parliamentary monarchy

No. It’s a Constitutional Monarchy and a Parliamentary Democracy.

where government executives and leaders are never, ever elected. They are always, and have been always appointed by the Queen.

The party leader of the party that wins the most seats in the election is asked by the Queen, or more accurately for the self-governing Dominions, H.M.’s representative, the Governor-General, to form a government. She cannot ask anyone other than the party with the most seats to form a government. (I’m not going to spend 10 minutes describing how a minority government works or forms a government because there are too many hypotheticals to enumerate.)

All the MPs are elected individually–that’s democracy; and in Canada the party leaders are chosen by ballot at a party convention where party members or their delegates vote.

Our versions of the executive and legislative branches of government are not separate entities like America’s but are one.

have been always appointed by the Queen.

No. The Queen asks the party leader with the most seats in the House of Commons to form Her government. (And the party with the second highest seat count becomes the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.)

I defy you to produce an actual ballot that has a Prime minister, Head of State, Commander in Chief, Premier or any other executive position on it.

That’s correct that we don’t have direct elections of those positions. The Queen is the Head of State. The PM is Head of Government. There is no rank of C-in-C, either civilian or military, in the UK or the Dominions. The PM, the Minister of Defence, and the military all have different roles to play in running the military during peacetime and wartime with the civilian PM deciding on and ordering the military to achieve the military goals of the government. The PM is the de facto C-in-C in the way that you are incorrectly using that term.

No ballot, no democracy.

We do have ballots. Our ballots are for parties’ candidates running in a riding who hope to win a seat through popular election to the House of Commons.

Your above crap is the equivalent of saying that America isn’t a democracy because the Electoral College “selects” the President and he is not directly elected by “We, the People”.

is driving me crazy!

A pretty short trip for someone who seems to think that the Englsih Civil War never happened; that the year is 1783; doesn’t recognize the role of the Mother of All Parliaments in the founding of your own electoral system; and that ‘the Queen still tells us what to do’.